Have you seen the September/October issue of Pastel Journal yet? In it is a special section on new pastel art supplies. Our friends at Blick Artist Materials, Terry Ludwig Pastels and Jack Richeson & Co., Inc came together to let you know about some exciting pastels, supports and substrates that you can add to your stash. Even better, they want to give a sample of each to one lucky winner.

It’s easy to win, them, too–simply tell us what inspires you to paint with pastel (or why you want to begin) by commenting on this blog post below, and you’ll be entered!*

Here’s a sample of what you could win just by commenting below!

This contest ends September 29, 2016, so you have plenty of time to comment now and then share this with a friend as well (they’ll thank you for it!).

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Comments (152)

I love the sensuousness of working in pastels. I feel that the colors and textures of soft pastels allow for greater and more nuanced expressiveness of ephemeral light, feelings and moods. Just seeing pastels is inspiring!

I love working with Pastels as it allows me to make mistakes and with ease I can correct them. To me Pastles is very forgiving, therefore a plus for me. I also love the softness and rich texture of the medium.

I’ve used pastels on and off since high school art. My mom bought me my first set, which was HUGE, but is now is many short, stubby pieces. I love the easy blending, the textures and the way your fingers looks after working with them. Multicolored.

I am always get inspired by nature, especially by flowers. I love to paint different kinds of flowers. The more colorful they are, the more fun it is for me to paint them. So I would be really happy about these pastels, because unfortunally I do not have so many. So please make me happy!!!!

Would really like to try pastel plein aire. Have painted outside with oil and watercolor,but would like to use pastel because of the immediacy,and ease of transport. Also love the rich colors and texture of pastel.

Don’t you believe that painting Plain Air with soft pastels will be easy. I have a cut to the bones box that is still on the heavy side. Makes me wonder why I do it, then I see the piece emerge and know why. You’ll love it. I do admire my friend that uses watercolor. A small folding palette, a boarded substrate, and sometimes water and a chair. But I’ll stick to pastel. Good Luck.

I enjoy creating art with pastels because of their soft velvety texture. For me I find them to be a fun and a vibrant medium to work with. I also like plein air painting so this will be a perfect addition to my art supplies.

Have been dying to try Terry Ludwig Pastels and the set shown is the one I want badly ! Pastels are inspiring to me because it is an immediate medium, so versatile and manipulative in texture and style, as well as adaptive to mixed media and ever-new applications. I don’t have to worry so much about chemical concerns, mixing, or additives. They travel and set up easily. I am not worried about the longevity—–consider Lascaux !!!!

I am inspired to create art by the joy of life. I like having the ability to capture a moment, a mood, someone’s personality and expression. Over the last year I’ve begun to experiment with pastels. You can do anything with them. I love layering and blending flesh tones on portraits and vivid colors and textures in landscapes and floral. I have a tight budget so i only have a few pastel pencils. I can only imagine how amazing it will be to work with soft pastels and work up a large portrait. How exciting it would be to win!

Hello All Pastel Lovers! I was very excited to see this announcement about a chance to win a set of Terry Ludwig Pastels. I started using Terry Ludwig pastels several years ago. I am an adjunct professor at Saddleback College in O.C., CA. This will be my 3rd semester teaching a Portrait Painting class in Pastel. The one characteristic .. well maybe 2 or 3 is that these pastels are very highly pigmented, hold up and go on flawlessly. It’s a bit like painting in oil. Beautiful coverage. I also love their square shape and being that they are buttery soft, that edge you can almost draw with. Brava! TL is definitely my favorite line of pastels… plus not one company can beat the Dark and the Portrait Sets. My staples! THANK YOU!
Peggy Nichols

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What amazes and inspires me about pastel is the magnificent range of colors available for you to try out. You no need to worry about color mixing or dilution what we do in oil or arcylic painting. I love to dirty my hand as a person who craves to become a fine artist, it gives me that mood, go pick the pastels give it on your paper, dirty your hand and feel good. lot more such things!!

Pastels equal freedom to me. I have young children and worked in oils the past. Too much time was lost in set up and break down. I have a great plain air set I can just grab and go too. Color choices and combinations are unending! Freedom to create, freedom to explore!

I feel a responsibility as an artist to evoke an emotional response in the viewer of my work. I choose subjects from nature that move me in a way that allows me to proceed from instinct rather than from rational thinking – that is, in a visceral way. By using this visceral reaction to render what I see, I hope that the leap we must make from 3 dimensions to 2 becomes a non-issue and will put the viewer in that particular place at that particular moment in time. Nature’s grandeur provides me with beautiful colors and light. I experience joy while painting with pastels in particular, because those colors and light are so impeccably achieved by layering and juxtaposing different pastels on various surfaces.

Pastels are so incredible. I love the tactile and versatile nature of working in pastels, whether I’m getting dirty using my hands and fingers or creating underpaintings with a brush and wash. The range of colors, the ease of travel, and the ability to store hundreds of paintings in a relatively small space with minimal cleanup, and being able to walk away with little more than a hand-washing makes them fun and easy to use. Then, when I see an amazing piece done in pastel, I’m inspired to get back to work and see what other possibilities can be created.

I was fortunate to be introduced to the pastel medium because of a gift of lessons with Reif Erickson a distinguished Pastelist. I fell in love with the medium and studied with Reif for a year. He taught me so much about color, values and composition. As I soaked up all I could learn from books, and workshops I worked on my own technique and have mastered this beautiful medium. It’s vibrancy and immediacy make it my preferred medium, and I love its flexibility that allows me to paint any subject matter. I enjoy trying new papers and new pastels, as any pastel artist will tell you, we never have enough and whenever a new color is produced, we want it!

I am a beginner. Learning all I can about pastels. I recently took a workshop from Lee McVey, and my love for pastels grew beyond my expectations. I started out, not even knowing how to use pastels, but my love grew very fast! I find the transfer process almost a “zen” moment. Applying the pastel is such a wonderful experience.

I love painting with pastels because it allows me to create by layering colors without mixing and the ease of painting plein aire or in my studio. Soft pastels just glide on the surface and give such rich color. It has always been one of my favorite mediums without all the fuss of finding the right brushes to do the job!

I had never seen touched or heard of Pastels before Sept 2010. I guess I had my head in the sand. However I took a class in pastel after I retired. I was hooked from the first day. I started with Alphacolor. Then Rembrandt, now Terry Ludwigs, Great Americans, Sennelier and any thing else I can get my hands on. In two short years I was participating in juried exhibitions and having my own solo exhibitions. I am now the first President of the newly formed Appalachian Pastel League. I offer workshops, at a local Tea Cupboard. Not bragging just wanting to let you know how thoroughly involved with Soft Pastels I truly am. Yeah, It’s like breathing. Necessary for me to survive. I love the tactile nature of pastels. Like molding a piece, more than “painting”. I love the way the light bounces off the painting instead of absorbing it. I can do things with pastel that I only dreamed of with acrylic. I’d love to win the supplies. I’m always running out.

I am lucky enough to have met Luz Haywood-Sullivan whose work knocked my socks off and who encouraged me to venture into the world if pastel with her. I was at that time a potter. The color and depth that could be achieved fascinated me. Started off with a small set of Rembrandts,
Then added Senneliers, Unisons, Great Americans, Diane Townsends and the greatest – Terry Ludwigs along with some Girault. I love the immediacy of the medium and the range of color and vibrancy available. And that I don’t have the wet paint issue.

I’ve been paintings with pastels for a very long time and I personally love it. I enjoy working with pastel because this medium is like doing magic. I often use pastel during my trips around the US to make studies and sketches of the places I visited. All in all this medium is a pure joy to work with so I continue working with it.

When I was first exposed to pastels some 35 years ago, I thought they were to pale and chalky to be interestiing. I poo-poo’d them as being dull. A few years ago, I took an on-going charcoal drawing class and the woman at the next easel was working with pastels. And they were vibrant and joyful, as was her work. After several weeks, I asked the teacher if she could show me how to use them. Sheroot me a long skinny scrap of green sanded paper and a photo of peaches on a tree. I drew the peaches on in pencil and then picked up an indigo blue stick to create a background. I pull the stick across the paper and the most vivid, rich, gorgeous blue swath of color appeared. It looked like velvet. And I fell in love. I use hard pastels and pastel pencils, but there is nothing, NOTHING like the buttery feel of soft pastels–and every color seems to look better in soft pastel. I paint in oils, acrylics, watercolor, gouche, and I do calligraphy, but oh, the pastels…they make my heart skip a beat!

Pure and simple, I’m a color addict. No white/beige walls for me in my house for sure. Pastels just feed that addiction. Any box of pastels is eye candy for me. To be able to use that candy to paint with is like icing on the cake. Fun, fun, fun!! No mixing, no waiting for anything to dry, just pure, beautiful color.

I’m close to a beginner with using pastels and have a very few right now to use. I
would love to try some Terry Ludwig Pastels…..I’ve heard many many good things
about them.
The UArt substrates sound wonderful also and I would like to have a chance to try
them out.
Cheers!
Val H.

Being a landscape painter, I love the immediacy of pastel for painting en plein air and allowing me to capture the scene in front of me with immediacy. A perfect crossover medium for anyone who likes to draw and paint.

When I began to take art lessons my first medium was pastel and I feel in love with them. The variety of techniques to create paintings Wyeth then was amazing. My favorite was doing animals, making all those beautiful strokes for thier fur and “painting” flowers, pastels are perfect for the velvet like finish of the petals. That was 15 years ago. I have expanded my art into water colors, oils and acrylics. I struggle daily with vision and hearing loss, find me at our studio at http://www.facebook.com/bluerockstudio teamwork, breaking boundaries and celebrating nature!

My inspiration begins with opening my palette box and looking at all those gorgeous colors! I love working with almost pure pigment in my hands … the expressive mark making and textural qualities that are really exclusive to the pastel medium keeps me coming back to them. I even love the sound they make as they skim sanded surfaces. Pure joy!

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I have recently gotten heavy into art journaling and mixed media! My current mediums are watercolor, acrylics and oil pastels. I am always so excited to learn new techniques and new mediums! this is a great opportunity for that! Thanks for the continuing inspiration!

I have seen a demonstration of pastels but have never worked with this medium. I am fairly new to the art world and am still learning and trying to figure out my niche. I create mixed media canvases and love to art journal. I would love the opportunity to try these!

Pastels used to scare me, and with good cause. I really just didn’t know how to make them work for me. Now, I have jumped in and am very comfortable with them. Living in the Sierras, that comes in handy while travelling! These would be wonderful!

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Opening a new box of pastels is like opening a box of chocolates. You want to use them all. So many rich and vibrant colors. Plein air painting with pastels makes it easy to capture the colors of nature. I sometimes only takes a couple of hours to capture the wonders of nature with pastels.

Uart is the primary substrate I use. I prefer the 500 or 600 grit for soft pastels. 800 for colored pencil. I sometimes use the 800 for oil pastel. The finished oil pastel has a softness about it that no other substrate gives. My primary soft pastels are Terry Ludwig, Sennelier and Rembrandt. the Rembrandts are my med hardness level- go to-get the backbones done pastel. Terry Ludwigs finish the piece. My favorite boxed set: Colors of Nature of course: Terry Ludwig. My senneliers are mostly the darker greens. I cannot explain what moves me to paint what? I love landscapes with clouds and trees and can paint them all day long, en plein aire. But I also enjoy the birds and animals that I do in the studio. I’ve even completed a portrait that I am not ashamed of one whit. Getting new supplies, either by gift or by purchase is a red letter day. As fast as I am going through them, I could use these. Keep the mag coming. I devour every issue.

I love working with pastels it is a slow and relaxing medium. It is a very forgiving medium too. You can blend colors with ease. I used them with my patients and both of us found them very theraputic. I have been using Dick Blick products for years.

The more I work with pastels, the more I love them. So much so that I have incorporated them into most of my paintings and am teaching a series of three workshops about pastel for the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen.

I have been an artist all my life, trying almost every medium. Once I found pastel I was hooked. I love the pure pigments and awesome colors. I am always trying different brands. I love plein air with pastels. When you are done there is no drying, just frame it up and you are on to the next painting. One brand I have not tried is Terry Ludwig. I would love to win this opportunity to use these pastels.

I love the softness and blend ability of pastels. I love rubbing the side of the pastel across the paper to get a textured look. The first time I used them I got hooked. Now I just can’t stop using them!

There’s something magical about holding a soft but solid block of pure color in your hand. The instant gratification when you make a mark on the paper is empowering to me. There’s no dry time and as I add layer after layer of pastel the image changes immediately allowing me to finish an illustration in one sitting or step back and think about taking a full pastel painting in a new direction. I feel that no other art form offers the pure and indulgent freedom that pastels offer.

Personally, I can’t recall how Pastels chose me or I chose pastels. Being a young 8 y/o teaching myself to draw, with graphite…pastels seemed to be “the natural go to” (for color) when I grew confident enough with my drawing skills. Natural Pigment “color” to this day continues to be my passion. L O V E them!
Have a great day! C

Pastels have so many levels of colours……I love what I can achieve…….I look forward to many adventures with pastel……I love love Pastel magazine …. I am inspired ……. I learn constantly ……endless opportunities with pastels…….

I find the purity, variety, and richness of the colors very alluring! I love the immediacy of the medium, its versatility in terms of strokes and textures, and the convenience. I enjoy creating/working/experimenting with the various hardnesses of the pastels and diverse substrates. Painting in pastel provides ample opportunity for new and stimulating artistic expressions.

It has taken years for me to get back to creating with pastels. I was tired of all the packing involved with plein air painting with acrylics. It is so much simpler with pastels. There is something empowering about the pastel…they become an extension of your hand. It is so direct and so versatile. I am looking forward to redicoveringof all kinds of pastel techniques!

Pastel is a medium I have not tried yet, but it intrigues me very much! I would love to capture my surroundings in the soft, luminous tones that pastel brings to the table. I haven’t started working with it yet because I’m afraid I’ll become extremely addicted!

I love the way that there is no down time to wait for the painting to dry before continuing. You can paint and change and paint some more and stop when you want, not when the medium dictates. I love the way pastels handle. Soft strokes to bold it is such a satisfying way to paint. The medium is just so flexible in ways that so many other are not. Just a fabulous way to paint.

The reason why I love working with pastels is because they always yield to giving a painting a soft, warm glow, that is hard to achieve with other mediums. It is just so beautiful for landscape work from the gorgeous clouds in the sky, and the warm glowing sunsets, to all the nature’s bounty in between, they are a truly lovely medium to work with. 🙂

For me I enjoy the tactile experience of using pastels. The sound they make on my paper. The smoothness of the chalky dust on my hands. The act of blowing excess color off the surface of my creation or the feel of blending color using an old paper stump! In my opinion, there just isn’t anything that compares!

I am retired and currently teaching art to senior citizens. I love the softness and also the vivid colors you can get with pastels. I teach all mediums and students really seem to enjoy the pastels, even though they are messy at times. We use pastel paper, sanded paper which seems to be a favorite because it holds the color well, and sanded board. I have introduced them to the Nu Pastels which they like since there is less dust. They are looking forward to learning even more ways to use their pastels.

There is no other drawing or painting medium that so potently reminds me of drawing as a child with crayons. Holding a little stick in your hand, rich with colour. Pastels arrive with such simplicity, then execute their arrival with amazing sophistication. The intensity of pigment can be bold, and other times so soft. Nothing’s changed; you would cry if you broke a crayon in half as a child, and it still makes me sook when I drop a pastel to the floor.

Pastels allow me to feel a connection with my art that most other mediums lack. The lack of a brush separating my hand from the color encourages a more visceral reaction to the process and therefore produces a piece that has more raw emotion than I can get with any other medium. I am intrigued by the soft earthy shades of these new pastels, and I am excited to work with them.

I absolutely love color and I find that pastel is the perfect medium for color scripts for animation. Pastels are a nice way of forcing myself to look at the colors and broad shapes before the details to improve my overall composition.

I’ve been painting with pastels for about five years, and it’s my favorite medium. I love the immediacy and the spontaneity of pastels. I’m inspired to paint by looking around me — clouds, rocks and mountains are my favorite subjects — and whenever I get my hands on a new pastel set! There’s nothing like opening a brand new set of luscious pastels, especially Terry Ludwigs.

I love having everything I need for working in pastel in one single box, all ready to set up when the right light appears. I seem to do my best work when its a situation for “painting into the effect”– the right light shows up after you have gotten the drawing and design down, so you can just focus on color at the end.

I would love these pastels! I am teaching myself, also using a lot of your articles and videos as reference and visuals. I want to become a pastel artist and this offer may just give me a great start ! I love all the info here,too. Hope to win

I love the immediate satisfaction and tactile feel of using pastels for my paintings. They allow for the spontaneity of my moods when I see something I just have to paint, and the rich colors at a glance often inspire me to paint when I haven’t been in the mood.

I love blending with my fingers, dust flying around, smears on my face. The result may be on paper, but the larger story is the mess I make of myself and the table. It’s glorious…the painting is simply the byproduct of the experience!

I’m up for a challenge! I have never worked in pastels before. The medium of choice for me is oils. I have used acrlyics in the past but that medium dries to fast. I have seen some beautiful work done and I have watched some videos on how-tos. I think everyones post are full of merit on why they should win over the next. Good luck on picking the winner I’m sure its going to be a difficult decision on your parts. Good Luck to everyone.

I’ve always loved sketching portraits in charcoal. But such wonderful pastel portraits by artists here is so inspiring that I eagerly wish to to try this new medium. Pastel medium seems to be very fascinating.

I enjoy drawing with pastels and employ them for doing plein air drawings to use as studio references for later paintings. It’s more intuitive to me than using pointed drawing tools, I can fill space or vary my texture by varying how I hold it. Most of the ones I have are scholastic quality though, it’s frustrating when I unearth an exceptionally hard spot & the colors aren’t as rich as they could be. These would be lovely to try!

I’ve been painting for over 35 years, primarily in oil. This past year, I’ve started using soft pastels for the first time and absolutely have fallen in love. The chroma is so much more intense. Most everyone says my latest portraits in pastels are some of my best work. Looking forward to doing some landscapes over the winter. Really need to add more colors to my pastel collection, exactly like those in this give-away. Haven’t used Terry Ludwig’s yet, and would love to try them out, as well as the papers.

Pastels make my heart sing. Each color has it’s own “note” and contributes to the final melody! I paint in many mediums but PASTELS…are by far my favorite!. I have been drooling over this latest Ludwig set since I laid eyes on them!! There would be a “Symphony” in my art if they were mine!. Never have enough colors you know!

I love pastels they are amazing, sometimes you just want to paint now, you don’t want to mix. Colors are amazing and your drawings are more realistic. Sometimes before I paint I do a pastel then they oil painting. Nothing like they pastel!.

What inspires me is color! I love the theory, the application, the psychology; everything about it interests me. 😀 I would love to win these simply because of the stated reason above and because I would love to learn a new medium!

I have a lot of fun with pastels although it is not a medium I have a lot of practice with yet. I tend to over blend the colors as I have a very basic set. I would love to explore this medium more and achieve results like those I see from other pastelists.

Working with pastels is a visual/tactile experience. Just looking at the colors before you, then picking one up sets the expression in motion. It is truly art in the present moment. You feel the color as it meets the paper, color over color image unfolding in waves of energy.

Soft pastels for me are colour in it’s purist form. I loved painting with soft pastels when I was younger and am now just getting back into it (30 years later). Would love to try some Ludwigs, I hear they are soft like butter cream..

The colours of the pastels that one may win are an inspiration!
Chocolate, velvet, smooth pleasure of creating something. Dream, breathe in, and close your eyes. And get to work!
Thank you for the opportunity. Crossing my fingers.

I took Chris Ivers’s beginners course this month, and she predicted “You’re gonna fall in love” with this medium. It wasn’t love at first paint, but she was right. Halfway through the course, things started to click, and now I’m in deep. I took her course because I had always wanted to try pastels after years of oil painting, and I am enjoying learning how the two media are so (completely) different.

Nothing is as forgiving and kind to an artist, as pastel is, I will alwaysbe inspired to work with it because it doesn’t have many limits, and is so helpful when obtaining interesting mixes of colour. I also learned art first with the pastel medium.

It’s my desire to do pastel paintings. Not sure why I am so intimidated by pastels. Anyway, I am overcoming this fear. These colors shown above are beautiful at best. Some bold and some subtle but all equally inviting. Inspiration says it perfectly, so here we go; uncharted territory here I come. Looking forward to the journey. Thank you for the inspiration.

I used hard pastels when I was first learning to draw and paint. Now I want to go back to it and use it to paint plein air. It’s a medium that encourages use of color in unusual places. My color has gotten a bit boring and I see pastels as a chance to make my paintings sing….

Pastel the unique style that brings art to life the way it shows the reality of life! It brings me so much pleasure I wont talk about just why I want to paint with pastel.Its what makes me want to paint with it.When it comes to doing my painting’s my portfolio I have been creating life drawing with an effect of my life perspective and thats what bring my art to life! Makes it more Realistic!